With Music on Their Mind

By

Stuart Isacoff

Aug. 8, 2012 6:18 p.m. ET

Santa Fe, N.M.

The three-day symposium on "Music, the Brain, Medicine and Wellness" that took place here from Friday through Monday represented an unlikely pairing. In one corner were the musicians: purveyors of magic who make us wistful, edgy, ecstatic or cheery simply through their artful shaping of tones and rhythms. In the other were the scientists out to prove there's really no such thing as magic. The first group provokes chills; the second clinically charts their neurological correlates.

At least that's what I thought before arriving. As it turns out, those scientists are also capable of dispensing some powerful magic.

Perhaps the most striking moment of the symposium came when Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center revealed the results of an approach he has developed, called auditory-motor mapping training, using pitch and rhythm to heal autistic children who are incapable of speaking. A video camera captured a boy, almost 5 years old, at various stages of the treatment: Although unresponsive at the beginning, after 10 sessions he suddenly uttered a word: "bubbles." It was the moment at which his parents heard his voice for the very first time. (Autistic children love anything that makes bubbles, noted Dr. Schlaug.) After 40 sessions, he was speaking simple sentences as well as his name. As this progress played out on screen, a gasp went up from the entire audience. It was a dramatic example of how music is now being employed to revive dormant pathways in the brain.

There were many such mind-bending moments at this gathering, though no one had known beforehand exactly what to expect—least of all the organizers. "I had been a board member of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for several years," reported Cheryl Willman, director of the Cancer Center at the University of New Mexico, who co-created the event with the festival's artistic director, composer Marc Neikrug. "When we were planning the dedication of the new Cancer Center, I commissioned Marc to write a piece." Mr. Neikrug recalled that he was simply going to write an overture for the occasion, but realized he had a unique perspective to share thanks to having lived on an Indian reservation with his Native American wife. "I worked with one of my nephews to put together a healing ceremony text based on the Native American concepts of the four elements and the four directions. The intention was to put anyone who was suffering into a receptive state, to facilitate recovery." When Dr. Willman saw the positive effect on the patients, the two began to talk about a conference that would seriously examine the healing possibilities of music.

"It had always been his dream," Dr. Willman said, "and I wanted to help him. We decided not to do the usual sort of thing—how the great composers were bipolar, and so on. Instead we wanted to look at the state of science today on the subject. We used a trio concept—inviting scientists, musicians and music therapists—knowing full well that there is a dynamic tension between those groups. The most important lesson I learned from a mentor was the best things happen when you make people who do different things talk to each other. The boundaries from those disciplines have to collide in order to change the way we think." They received funding support from Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research.

It was a whirlwind of a convocation. The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, celebrating its 40th year, provided high-level musical performances. And many of the presentations, all delivered by leading figures in both the research and treatment branches of the field, suggested intriguing paths to pursue.

ENLARGE

Aniruddh Patel, with percussionists Angela Gabriel and Jim Goulden, discussing the strong link between rhythm and reading skills at the three-day "Music, the Brain, Medicine and Wellness" symposium in Santa Fe.
Steven Ovitsky

Laurel Trainor demonstrated that young children who synchronized their movements through musical activities became more socially cooperative than those who didn't; Aniruddh Patel revealed a strong link between rhythm and reading skills; Petr Janata illuminated the relationship between music and memory. Michael Thaut parsed music's ability to override faulty brain circuits in patients with loss of motor control. And David Huron offered a fascinating explanation of why music touches our emotions—based on the study of animal behavior. Given the richness of these findings, Josephine Briggs rightly raised alarm bells over the dearth of music programs in our schools.

What happened to that expected friction between the right-brain and left-brain camps? As the program went on, my trepidation about encountering what Friedrich Schiller called "the disenchantment of the world" seemed unfounded. Nevertheless, I decided to check on the emotional temperature of the scientists by conferring with Dr. Schlaug. Did he find this work as miraculous as I did?

"Sometimes something looks like a miracle, but it comes about through knowledge and skill. There is some explanation for the outcome," he stated.

Still, I ask, wasn't it emotionally jolting when that little autistic boy began to speak? "We have several children who have spoken for the first time," he replied. "We had stroke patients who couldn't speak, but we got them to sing. It keeps me going to find ways to coax the brain into doing something it is not doing. But it's not about me—it's about the patient and the patient's family."

"But," I insisted, looking for agreement that this stuff is, indeed, magical, "doesn't it give you chills?"

"Yes," he conceded with a smile. "It definitely gives you chills."

Mr. Isacoff's latest book is "A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians—From Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between" (Knopf).

The most difficult problem in answering the question of how music creates emotions is likely to be the fact that assignments of musical elements and emotions can never be defined clearly. The solution of this problem is the Theory of Musical Equilibration. It says that music can't convey any emotion at all, but merely volitional processes, the music listener identifies with. Then in the process of identifying the volitional processes are colored with emotions. The same happens when we watch an exciting film and identify with the volitional processes of our favorite figures. Here, too, just the process of identification generates emotions.

An example: If you perceive a major chord, you normally identify with the will "Yes, I want to...". If you perceive a minor chord, you identify normally with the will "I don't want any more...". If you play the minor chord softly, you connect the will "I don't want any more..." with a feeling of sadness. If you play the minor chord loudly, you connect the same will with a feeling of rage. You distinguish in the same way as you would distinguish, if someone would say the words "I don't want anymore..." the first time softly and the second time loudly. Because this detour of emotions via volitional processes was not detected, also all music psychological and neurological experiments, to answer the question of the origin of the emotions in the music, failed.

But how music can convey volitional processes? These volitional processes have something to do with the phenomena which early music theorists called "lead", "leading tone" or "striving effects". If we reverse this musical phenomena in imagination into its opposite (not the sound wants to change - but the listener identifies with a will not to change the sound) we have found the contents of will, the music listener identifies with. In practice, everything becomes a bit more complicated, so that even more sophisticated volitional processes can be represented musically.

Further information is available via the free download of the e-book "Music and Emotion - Research on the Theory of Musical Equilibration:

I am so glad to hear this conference has happened. I do this kind of Music Therapy with non-verbal kids on a regular basis, and to have such well identified and credentialed professionals and schools to back this up is a huge step forward for Music Therapy AND for autism funding sources! Antoinette Morrison MT-BC

Fantastic stuff. And nicely written as to asking the scientist about the seeming magical aspect. The doctor clearly cares, but instinctively (ie, by training) knows to stay focused on facts and results - the necessary mundane steps needed to do what indeed seems like magic.

Here and in the previous work alluded to w stroke victims, it's striking that a modality as simple and universal as music can act like a key to unlock a behavior. A clear survival value for music has been hard for scientists to pinpoint - but what if our species just had better tunes and better beats than those others?

The question then becomes, better at what – but we all know what music is good for! The evidence of early humans mating with other close species is already established by genomics. Humans invariably like their own tribe’s music the best – perhaps this was fatally missing in the others? It’s hard to see how we’ll ever know, but it’s amusing to speculate about. Music hath charms!

It depends on where you are located. I would try reaching out to some of the experts mentioned, like Dr. Schlaug at Harvard, or, if you are in the New York area, Connie Tomaino at the Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. Certainly, they can suggest how you might proceed. -- SI

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